Are you watching closely as the image disappears?

All we ask you do is take a look at this image, and we mean really look. In fact, stare right into the centre of it. No games, just look and relax. See the image that you know is there disappear.

Done? Here's how it happened. You've just fallen victim to Troxler's fading. Hold your gaze at one particular point and your peripheral vision starts to disappear, the same sort of thing as you feel your t-shirt in the morning after putting it on, then don't feel it at all a few minutes after.

Neurons in your visual system become acquainted to the central focal point and begin to ignore the outside space, which turns it white.

The blurred image? Well that had to be used because something of a crisper definition would have had too much stimulus, meaning the trick wouldn't have worked, as your visual neurons would be constantly active with the other details. This would make it too difficult to maintain focus on the one particular are for the 20 seconds required for the fading to take place.

Jason England

I am the Founder and Editor-in-chief of New Rising Media. You can follow me on Twitter @MrJasonEngland.

You Can Apply To Be A Space Tour Guide… In 2025

We hear it all the time - space travel will be available to us all by the mid-2020s, but what does that mean for creating new jobs? Well, you can find out and even look to apply as a Space Tour Guide by 2025, according to a report by The Future Laboratory and Microsoft.

Here's What Jupiter Would Look Like If It Was The Same Distance From Us As Our Moon

Space is massive, we get it. In fact, to us as humans, trying to get even the faintest inclination of the scope and size of our own solar system, let alone the universe or the milky way, is a task inconceivably difficult. To make sense of it all, there's a treasure trove of information, diagrams and visualisations out there that give us a remote idea of how enormous space and its respective planets truly are. But even so, few can match this picturesque effort by Redditor jb2386.

8-foot iNuke Boom iPod Dock ready for debut at CES

Take a look at the image of the $30,000 iNuke Boom iPod dock from Behringer above, and we mean really look. You maybe able to make out the iPod Touch that's mounted right there on top of this beast of an audio system.

The 2011 New Rising Media Christmas Gift Guide

We took a look around and noticed one particular constant: people already know what they want. These gift guides are, essentially, pointless re-hashes of old reviews that website has already done to give an air of assistance in a technological impairment that is buying for someone for Christmas.

Take a look at the consumer end also, these products are marketed to such an extent with the layer of 'newness' that the likes of a Galaxy nexus, Gears of War 3 or a Playstation 3 (£249 for console and 4 games, pretty good value). So what we have are two voices recommending exactly the same product, which is all good and well, as it fuels this festive season of praying to the Capitalist Gods.

But what about alternatives? What about those ideas that the person you're gifting to didn't realise they needed up until the point they open your present? Those small jewel-encrusted moments where you are genuinely surprised by a gift come few and far between, and we'd very much like to help with that. With this in mind, here's our Gift Guide.